Page 59 of Air Force One
“White, which can be pretty. A bit on the chilly side so we aren’t emotionally attached. What’s your point?”
That’s when she saw his smile. It was the one only a fellow Special Operations warrior could appreciate. It was a sure sign of a totally harebrained idea that would either be spectacular or get them all killed.
By the time they had it all hashed out, she was betting on the latter. Which was about normal at this point in an operation. Right on track.
52
Holly hadn’t heard him approach, but she knew Max was there without looking up. Not behind The Bunker’s bar, instead sliding silently onto a stool beside hers.
Pavle and Tad had gone to make preparations for Inessa’s extraction. Done it simply because she asked without questioning who or why.
Mike was asleep on his jacket on the dance hall stage at the far end of the next room in the long bunker that was The Bunker. She should be getting what few hours she could…but even that had eluded her.
“At some point the cost becomes too high. That’s why you can’t sleep.”
No need to ask, he was speaking a different language than before. This wasn’t some mission planning language fit for people like Pavle, Tad, and Mike. This was between Spec Ops warriors. Holly could only stare at the glass of orange juice she’d poured but had yet to do more than wrap her hands around and hold on to like the line towing her away from the collective death on Air Force One. Yeah, only to kick her ass upon reaching the surface.
“Do you have to do this?”
Holly couldn’t even find the energy to nod. “I made a promise.”
“One worth your life?”
Holly no longer knew. “It’s all I have to go by.” Since the day her foolishness had killed her brother, she’d sworn to pay back his love by being the best. All through her life she’d reaffirmed that—for all the good it had done those around her. She’d sworn the same when she’d joined the Australian Special Air Service Regiment and again over the corpses of her team in a godforsaken Malay jungle. When she understood Miranda’s challenges, yet witnessed her willing battle against forces she couldn’t possibly understand, she’d stepped forward without a moment’s consideration. If there was a way to turn aside from her present path, she’d left it behind at sixteen in that flash flood slicing across the Australian Outback.
“One worth Mike’s life?”
And there was the question corroding away inside her since the moment Mike had given her Inessa’s message. Her first extraction from inside Russia had been done by her alone. Mike had assisted but remained safe in a plane circling over Poland.
This time?
She should leave him behind. Or drug him and go alone. Or accidentally break his leg. Or…
But if she did any of the thousand other scenarios she’d thought up, she’d lose him as assuredly as if she got him killed. He would never trust her again if she shut him out this time. He’d walk away as he almost had two years ago—and she’d never get him back. If he did, that might be the one scenario she wouldn’t survive.
Besides, he knew as well as she did that this time, if she went alone, she wouldn’t be coming back. Either shot or spending the rest of her short days in some Siberian prison camp. Some missions simply couldn’t be managed by a team of one. The only plan they’d been able to cook up in the limited time frame required Mike’s skills to make this work.
“I made a promise.” It was the only truth she had left.
“Made any to Mike?”
She had. “Only to spend the rest of my life with him. Never said anything about how long that life would be.”
Spec Ops dark humor earned her the appropriate soft Ha, with no emotion behind it.
“You need to be thinking hard about your choices.” Max’s sigh acknowledged the trap she’d built for herself.
“Hello.” Her tone said Been there, done that.
“Yeah.” So had he. Except somehow he’d made it out.
Accepting her truth, Max finally slid off his stool. Rather than departing, he circled behind the bar. She knew he kept a Benelli M4 shotgun back there, because she’d faced it before—from the muzzle end.
“Yeah, shoot me now. Save them the trouble.”
He didn’t bother with a second Ha as that would have been over the top.
Instead, he tossed her a radio little bigger than the palm of her hand, but with a fat antenna that said satellite capable. Then he held up its twin and tucked it in his pocket before walking away into the darkness. “Go wake Mike. I’ll make some breakfast.”
